25.8.14 - Tal Spektor - "Stories of Berlin - 1.Outside"

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

I thought I might give you the potentially-offensive poem with severe warning that it is not close to reality in any way, just a joke, but then I remembered my computer is in repair (I am sending this from my old faithful), so I do not have it today. Would you like it next time?

 

As for this, it is my amateur vinaigrette, but I hope you enjoy it. I also wonder what this story seems to be, what you think this experience means, or what you would take from it. Enjoy!

[jagabond]

Well, it's interesting in that it lacks contractions almost entirely. So I'm curious what that's about.

 

As a vignette, I feel like it's too insubstantial to give critiques on, because as you said, it's not fully formed. It's about directions, misdirections, being lost. I guess? What's up with the narrator, where's he going and why?

 

It probably says more about me than the story that I am more interested in the narrator's speech pattern than the events around him. The environment isn't fleshed out enough to give any real sense of tone. I feel like this excerpt does a good job to exemplify why movement is not action, which can of course be a good thing to write about.

 

Hope that was helpful!

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

Hmmm. I guess you have latched onto my style of writing, because you felt there was nothing else to write about.

 

 

First, contractions. My narrator, assuming that it is not a character who is specifically used to using contractions, is usually contraction-less, although full of fused words, like "alot". This is because I was taught to fuse words (by just redacting the space) at school, and because I always feel contractions are off, not giving the words enough weight. This is my natural way to write. When I write dialogue, I tend to put in some more contractions, attributed to character, but there was barely any dialogue here.

 

I also did not repeat most things I said, as this feels too short to do that. Maybe that is why you lost the whole part about the narrator going to the Martin Gropius Bau (I knew I should have explicitly mentioned it was a museum) and the Bowie exhibit.

 

Do you think I should write more about the environment? I can do that, but will it be better for the story?

 

 

Thank you!

[Robinski he/him]

We, this is certainly a week for interesting submissions (apart from mine of course, bog standard fantasy slush). Flash fiction is something I know very little about but, as usual, that don’t mean I ain’t formed an opinion!

 

It feels churlish to say it, but the English could do with some polishing, particularly given that you refer to the Queen’s English, some of the language is quite distracting – the tenses in particular. On that subject, you refer to British – which, as a language, doesn’t exist. I see that Wiki cites the term British English as distinct from American English, seeming to use the term to apply to English that is spoken outwith Great Britain – for example in the Commonwealth or in the European Union.

 

The subject of you story, which I take to be communication, is an interesting one. I also liked the travelogue feel and the reference to German place names – Berlin is somewhere that I am interested to visit in the future. I guess my difficulty comes down to the fact that I'm not sure what to take from the story. I didn’t really learn anything of great significance about the character so, other than being invited to think a little about communication and navigation, I'm not sure what I got from it.

 

This may be down to me, however, as I have read almost no flash fiction, but I would still expect some conflict, an arc of some sort, and some kind of character development (albeit very limited!). I guess the narrator did gain some insight into helping someone on the street, even thought he was lost himself, and from that, he found his own way - perhaps I took more from this that I realised initially.

 

Oh, and I refuse to accept the existance of "fused words" - 'alot' is not a word, neither is 'nevermind' - where would we be if everyone went around inventing their own words? We'd be deep in the finglesnort, that's where.

[andyk he/him]

First off I'm going to disagree with Robinski on fused words, maybe even disagree alot    ('fused words' is not a phrase I've heard before to describe them, but I like it) - not that we should go spouting them everywhere, but I quiet like the potential they hold as occasional tools to make a voice distinctive.

 

Getting to the point...

 

The tenses seem quite muddled between past and present, which I found off-putting.

 

I thought that the first conversation, with the uniformed strangers, had potential to be an entertaining bit of dialogue. It seems like you've got an interesting couple in that bit, and I'd have liked to see how they talk over each other as well as seeing more about their characters.

 

Overall, this felt to me like a story in which not much happened, or possibly the start of something longer. This may reflect more about my taste in reading than about the story, as I'm not a big fan of the literary fiction genre and this felt like that sort of thing. It's stronger on theme than on event or emotion, and I like my themes carried along by those two.

[Mandamon he/him]

I've generally got the same reactions as the others.  The vignette (or is that vinaigrette?) gives a sense of travelogue wonder, but even for something as short as a scene, I didn't take much from it.  There was confusion and missed opportunities, but I didn't feel they particularly went anywhere or meant anything.  Maybe that's what a vignette is?  I don't know.  The conversation with the two tourists was easily the best part to me.  More like that might give more depth to both the characters and the setting.

 

As to the writing style, I also noted the tense difficulties, and thought it was wordy and could be more concise.  Especially for something this short, every single word must do at least one thing, if not two or more.

 

"Fused words" I don't have too much of an opinion on.  I use them sometimes, but I often go back and correct, just because it feels vaguely wrong.

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

I said "it was certainly British". Andyk is certainly British. The Queen is certainly British. Tea is certainly Chinese. I am certainly Israeli. I was talking about the place where the accent originated from, the place the couple came from. If that was unclear, I apologise. But I certainly was not referring to the English language with the wrong noun. While I might do that - intentionally - in works set in the future or something along those lines, this particular instance was completely sensible.

 

 

As for tenses, some of it may be by mistake. It is written in past tense, with some particular lines in present (all said directly to the audience, but potentially removable), but maybe some of the sentences that should have been in the past tense are in the present, as the first version was present, which did not work for me. 

 

 

Fused words (literally "welded/soldered words") appear everywhere in Hebrew. We use in for general purposes, including normal words (cable train, projector), which may be formed that way (by "fusing" the two relevant words into one). In English, they make two-word combinations that feel rather unspecific or have diverse meaning potential into a specific noun, and that way, grammatically, you can also know more easily what each other word in the sentence is referring to.

Example: 

Street light can potentially any light (whether the device or the beam) that incidentally shines upon the street.

Streetlight is the device that is set in streets so that there will be light on the street.

 

 

Huh. I guess I must have more obvious points. Since I actually lived this, I know what I learned from it. I thought that not including all of the seven hundred thoughts in the middle (I think fast when semi-bored), and putting only these two encounters would make clear the fact that the point was

about knowing how to communicate with strangers well and doing just that, frequently.

 

 

I also know I need much training. I have never had a writing group, not ever before. I was not able to attend a good writing class, either. I have taught myself how to write (mainly be trying to see how to make arguments and off-the-top-of-my-head stories more interesting) without any self-help books, which I suspect is why I did such a shitty job.

[smiles apologetically at redundant skill]

 I am a raw... mudstone, seeing as I am not sure that I am capable of shining. And I am here to learn what I can. Is that cool with you? 

 

 

As for extending dialogue, that means writing characters I had not invented, but encountered. Writing text I do not remember or know. I am going to need to think quite a bit... I have never tried to extend dialogue before. How do you people do that?

 

 

Nor have I learned rephrasing to be intentionally more or less wordy/flowery/concise. Seems that I need to learn a great deal before I am worth the effort of reading

 

 

I was also just a bit surprised that none of you noticed the title I thought was clever - 1.Outside. This is one of Bowie's great 90's albums, and sort of fits this. But now that I think of it, it seems sensible that you would not notice such redundancy.

 

 

 

Thank you all for your help!!

[Robinski he/him]

Funny, I always think of tea as coming from India, or Ceylon (ha, age giveaway!).

 

Yeah, okay, I take your point - I felt it was a description of the language, possibly because that was the topic of the narrative at that point - anyway, it's a detail. And I'm Scottish, by the way...

 

...and British.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Robinski

[jagabond]

Do you think I should write more about the environment? I can do that, but will it be better for the story?

 

To tease andy a little bit, re: literary fiction. Literary is really just shared-world fanfiction if you think about it like that

 

As for environment, I don't mean super overt details. But the story is aimless in a way that is also unfulfilling. I don't know what it's about, what I'm holding onto, and because it's in a mostly-familiar world, it could be anything. I had no central image to latch onto, which made it hard to critique much else beyond the style.

 

The contraction thing, again, is just my internal editor coming out. It's fascinating to see a consistent lack of it in narration, so much so that I assume it's a character trait. That's all.

 

Re: tenses, I noticed one or two present tense jumps in the beginning, nothing a careful eye wouldn't catch.

[CommandanteLemming he/him]

LOVE THIS! I like your voice a lot and the ending was awesome. I live in Washington, DC - so my city is constantly overflowing with confused tourists, and I can definitely identify.  

 

Without getting too far into the weeds on line-edits, I'll agree that the "English needs a little polishing" - stuff like "But I could not blame them" would be "But I can't (or cannot) blame them". Also you used the word "decided" a lot - I would get rid of this and make your sentences more action-oriented rather than thought oriented ("I did X" rather than "I decided to do X"). If you want us to see thought, maybe actually make your thoughts more detailed and have us see the characters internal deliberations - but personally I think just go with "I did X".

 

There are also long phrases, "without having discovered anything I did not already figure out on my own." that you might consider shortening to things like "without discovering anything I didn't already know". Just think about ways to do the same thing with fewer words. 

 

Minor point, I would spell it "Friedrichstrasse" instead of "Friedrichstraße" - if for no other reason than people unfamiliar with Germany may not know how to pronounce it mentally. 

 

Overall, good stuff. Some of the language is a bit labored and needs some fine-tuning - but the overall concept is brilliant. 

Edited August 26, 2014 by CommandanteLemming

[andyk he/him]

To tease andy a little bit, re: literary fiction. Literary is really just shared-world fanfiction if you think about it like that

 

 

Haha! Might have to use that one.

And who was it took the argument to extreme and suggested that all fiction is in some sense fantasy, because you're always changing something, so it's never the real world.

[CommandanteLemming he/him]

Just now re-reading all the stuff on contractions and Hebrew-English conversions and I agree that lack of contractions could be a good element of voice. Especially seeing as your narrator encounters actual English people, it's important to the story that your narrator is not a native English speaker and hence his internal monologue is not in vernacular English. If you want, you might even consider referencing this in the story. If you think or mutter anything in Hebrew or about Israel, it would give us a sense that we should think of the character as Israeli and fill in our mental details with whatever it is we think an Israeli looks like. As a corollary, we will also assume that he  doesn't think, look, or act like a German, Brit, or American - and will forgive him for not sounding like one. Definitely keep with this story - I think it's very good.  

[jagabond]

Haha! Might have to use that one.

And who was it took the argument to extreme and suggested that all fiction is in some sense fantasy, because you're always changing something, so it's never the real world.

That might've been le Guin; she said something to that effect in one of her essays. I'm sure she's not alone, but that's where I've read that idea most recently.

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

Thank you so much, Lemming! You know, I am so happy to hear you like it - I never heard such praise before, not that the two people whom I showed things to before were too knowledgeable about storytelling and critiquing...

I would love it if you could PM with me about why you liked what you did, and even more - how to repair the faults you all see. You just seem to be the person most excited about this story. Is that cool with you?